Category: Internet

Sky Broadband

A few months after buying Easynet Sky have launched their Sky Broadband package. On the surface the offerings are very cheap compared to competitors and also offer a free wireless Netgear router for all customers.

Sky Broadband

Look a little deeper though and things aren’t so clear. Firstly the max package is subject to a fair usage policy which if going by UK Online’s FUP will be similar to most other providers.

Secondly is that the broadband will be provisioned through Easynets LLU (Local Loop Unbundled) exchanges. This at the moment covers 28% of the UK but by year end will be over 50% and by end of 2007 over 70%. This is an extremely aggresive expansion over the coming months which will test the capacity of the network and also the quality of support staff. If you don’t connect to an LLU exchange you will use Sky’s Connect package which doesn’t offer as good value as the three packages mentioned above.

Third – you need to pay for a BT phone line which for many will add to the cost.

Fourth – you need to be a Sky Digital customer. If these points don’t cause you an issue then the broadband package is an amazing offer. Great value and the prospect of a fast Video on Demand service linked in with your Sky box. Despite this it’s not enough to tempt me into moving and that’s all down to Easynet/BT.

Six months ago I moved to NTL. That’s the last time I had issues with my broadband connection. Previous to NTL I had a short but unhappy experience with Freedom2Surf’s LLU service provisioned by Easynet. Unreliable, prone to disconnects and difficult to resolve due to problem being passed between Freedom2Surf, Easynet and BT forced my hand into switching to NTL. It will take a lot to convince me to move back although £10 a month compared to £35 with NTL is a strong argument. At the very least the competition from Sky should make NTL offer a more competitive service. More on the Sky offers can be found in the investor presentation.

Zooomr

EdgeEdgeHosted on Zooomr

I love my Edge magazines and the spines of the first few years look so much better than the drab recent ones. Anyway, the real reason for the post was to link to a Zooomr image I had uploaded and activate my Zooomr Pro account. Which I have done. Not tried out much of the Zooomr service yet but will over the next few days and report back. Still, if you want a free photo sharing account that allows for 2 Gig of uploads per month and you have a blog…..

  • Sign up for a Zooomr account
  • Upload a photo to Zooomr
  • Publish a blog post on your site containing the Zooomr image you uploaded
  • Visit the Proitizer to validate your blog post and get your pro account

And ultimately wax lyrically about how great Zooomr is. Will try some of the features soon although they will be down for a day next week while they ‘perform’ an upgrade… but kudos to Zooomr team for sharing the goodness.

Back to Edge – I do still love the mag, the style, the content (even in this web world where they can be 4-6 weeks behind) and the arrogance. Lovely.

Ego’s

The reason I hardly ever post on internet forums are other people’s ego’s. A quick wander through avforums highlights this – a massive amount of people who think they know everything and who are willing to force their view on the world, sometimes too forcefully, sometimes inaccurately. At the same time I really appreciate reading other peoples views and opinions as they can be more helpful than magazine reviews which I still suspect can be bought for a price.

This can happen on blogs too. Take a trip over to Binary Bonsai and you’ll see a messy rant between the owner and Paul Thurrott over Vista and some images. Nasty and over the top – for a guy to rant about theft in respect of a Vista screenshot and then to see some windows fanboys jump on the bandwagon highlights some of the issues I see in forums. Ego’s.

I just wish that people who post frequently and strongly would think about their response if they were speaking to the person in a room or in a group of like minded others – would they be that rude? Would they rant? Maybe they would but I really do doubt it. Maybe forums and commenting systems need a ego setting that checks for ranting, highlights the issues and doesn’t allow you to post for 30 minutes….a cooling off ego system.

Flock Hands On

The first official beta of Flock was launched last week and as it promised so much I gave it an extended test. Eight months ago I was pretty scathing about Flock. Not for me was the upshot of my brief trial. So why is it now so close to becoming my default browser?

The browser has established itself as the most used app on a pc, for me at least. Get news, share opinions, shop, blog, download etc etc etc. No other app is used as much as the browser. So to move application it has to be as quick as the opposition, render pages accurately and also support easy migration from your old app. Flock is based on Mozilla (same code as Firefox) and I found the import of data to be excellent. Cookies and form data were imported as well as favourites although how the favourites were stored is another matter – more on that later.

Flock - New ItemsI thought the previous version of Flock was slow, not just in the application itself but also rendering web pages – not so this version. Almost all of the extra functionality worked well and was snappy in use. Web page rendering was fast and accurate. I also love the look of the app – more like a Mac than a Windows app although after using Vista there are some influences from there too. You can easily see when there is new photo or news content – a small orange circle shows you when your contacts or RSS feeds have been updated. Makes for an easier browsing experience.

Photo’s
Flock - Flickr tag searching on your photo's or your contactsFlock integrates with Flickr and Photobucket via a Photo’s topbar. Once you allow the app to talk to your Flickr account it will check to see if your contacts have added any new photo’s and let you know when there are new ones to view. You can easily select your own photo’s or your contacts to be viewed in the topbar. Click on the photo to view it in the browser itself. You can also view your own, contacts or public photo’s by tag. The topbar totally changes how I use Flickr and now makes it easy to keep up to date with new content.

Flock - Upload PhotoIf this wasn’t enough Flock also comes with it’s own uploader application to make publication to Flickr easy. Drag photo’s from any webpage to the topbar and it will launch the uploader app (which can be launched independently at any time). Using this app you can crop, rotate, resize images before uploading and create a new set, add to an existing set and then upload your images. You can also select files from your hard disk or just drag from explorer onto the app. Works really well and your newly uploaded images are instantly viewable in the topbar. More details after the jump. Continue reading “Flock Hands On”

BumbleSearch

A great extension for Firefox – BumbleSearch. Can easily switch off shopping results from a Google search, search other sites from the same Google search page and also cross search ebay, Amazon, Digg etc. Can turn on search highlighting which makes finding info on a page very easy. Also has some sidebar note capturing functionality which I don’t use. Well worth installing.

Picasa Web Albums

Google launched Picasa Web Albums last week which allows you to publish your Picasa managed photo’s easily to the web. I was interested as I use Flickr for my web albums and my local photo management is poor – would Picasa sort out my local and web needs?

Picasa - Upload OptionsEven though Picasa is beta software the Picasa Web Albums are officially a ‘test’. Already trying to differentiate from Flickr Beta and Gamma. Once you sign up it’s then easy to publish photo’s from Picasa. Select a photo or album and load it into the Photo Tray. Then select Web Album to load whatever has been added to the Photo Tray.

The options on uploading are fairly limited. You can create a new album or add photo’s to an existing album. You can add a description or add location (for Google Earth integration which is really smart). You select the quality of the picture you want to upload and then finally whether the pictures are public or private. The uploading then takes place in the background allowing you to continue using Picasa.

Picasa - My Public Gallery.jpgOnce uploaded you can easily see your gallery at picasaweb.google.com/username (mine’s here). Compared to Flickr there are some obvious disadvantages. No concept of tagging or groups and hence a real lack of community unlike Flickr which uses these features to drive the website and share your photo’s with other like minded groups. Picasa album functionality is also basic – can view a slideshow and change order but that’s about it – feels very old school compared to Flickr but that’s really just styling that could be addressed through time. There is nothing similar to the Flickr Organize features at all.

Picasa - Album View.jpg

For free Picasa will allow for 250Meg of storage – if you take a lot of photo’s this will go quickly. For $25 a year you get access to 6Gig of storage. It’s not clear if that is the maximum amount of storage or whether you get an additional 6Gig every year. Flickr doesn’t limit storage but upload bandwidth. For free you are allowed to upload 20Meg per month and are limited in the amount of sets (albums you can create). There are also adverts. For $25 a year you get a 2Gig per month upload limit, unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth and sets. No adverts either. For my requirements Flickr wins hands down.

Flickr also allows 3rd party access via API’s which means external apps and companies can access your photo’s (with your permission) to create print albums, allow for easy access from phones and other applications etc. Google doesn’t have anything like that at the moment although you can order prints from Picasa with ease.

If you use and love Picasa for local photo management then Picasa Web Albums will be a good solution as like most Google online offerings it is simple to publish and easy to use. Flickr is far more feature rich though and makes sharing and also finding photos easy. I also like the number of apps that now link to Flickr. Picasa Web Albums looks to be more expensive than Flickr while offering less. It’s a shame there is no way to use Picasa and publish to Flickr instead as on this showing I can’t see anyone wanting to move from Flickr to Picasa Web Albums.

Web Tools Update

  • Visit flickr – notice anything different? Some updates to the styling and some new functionality. It’s also officially moved out of beta…to gamma. It would be so wrong of any web app to officially move out of beta – just wouldn’t be web 2.0. I’m liking the changes to the search and organisation links. Organizing photo’s is a bit easier to – made the whole site easier to use.
  • Google Trends. Nice app for stat whores and info gatherers. Compare search patterns for up to five search terms and see some pretty graphs and also how that search term is used locally and across the world. For example, look at the increase in the term Edinburgh around festival time. Also links to related news items if available. Great app.
  • Google Notebook. Another Google app which has just been launched – this allows you to link and clip web sites. Online research tool basically. Download an extension for Firefox to allow easy access to your one or many notebooks from the browser (IE also). From what I’ve used it’s fine – no rss or xml sharing of list though so it’s not yet a del.ici.ous rival. Wasn’t there a Google Bookmarks app as well? There was – which has tagging of sorts but not much sharing. Combine the two and you’ve got a far better app.
  • Google Calendar. Has become my full time calendar replacing 30boxes and Outlook. Easy to use, search and is integrated nicely with Google Mail. There are other more feature rich apps on the web but this meets all my needs.
  • If Google integrates mail, calendar, notebook and some sort of to-do then it would be a perfect online organiser. Hopefully it’s only a matter of time. The apps (apart from to-do) are all there but have the feel of separate applications that are not well integrated. A wee bit of Ajax magic would soon sort that.

Google Calendar

Another Google app, this time Calendar. After a quick play today I think this is easier to use than 30boxes so if you are after a calendar that you can use at anytime this is recommended. Easy to share (RSS, ical, xml) with others if that’s your bag too.

I want integration with Outlook though – a nice button within the app to synchronise my offline and online calendar or even better an option so that it syncs on start up. Maybe it’s time to make the switch to using online e-mail, calendars and to-do as I could get most of my functionality from Google except that it’s blocked from work. There’s always a fly in the ointment.